


Their Due

by Novaturient (Iron)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, EVERYONE - Freeform, Everyone has their own agenda, Magic and Spells, Multi, Time Travel, dragons are pains in the asses, fix it but not really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-05 04:06:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 15,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1804696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iron/pseuds/Novaturient
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya is six. </p><p>(That is a lie.)</p><p>Arya is sixteen. </p><p>(That is a worse one.)</p><p>- - </p><p>The Gods demand their due.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ARYA

**Author's Note:**

> Arya awakens within the walls of Winterfell.

ARYA

She wakes as the moon streams through a narrow window, curled amongst soft furs and sweet smells and warmth and home. 

She has not known warmth for longer than she had known it - not warmth like this, bone deep, so different than the heat of blood across her hands, a campfire at her back, the sun baking her head. For a moment she lies still, groggy like she has not been since the end of her training with the Faceless Men, like she has not been since Winterfell burned. 

Then - fur, warmth, sweet smells - she startles to full wakefulness. A scream burbles in her throat. 

Fighting, she pushes against the furs. She feells trapped. Sweat trickles between her shoulder blades. Long, sticky strands of hair glue themselves to her face. 

Her hair is not long. 

She rolls free of her blanket furs. Her limbs knock against the stone ground, elbows and knees and back hitting spring warmed stone. It hurts more than it should. 

Standing shows a greater issue. Her arms and legs and hands and feet are too small, even as she stands just fine on them. She is just barely two heads taller than her own bed, half a head her side table, barely tall enough to reach the handle of her door. 

This time she cannot completely strangle the scream that rises in her throat. It comes out a high keen, barely a sound at all, a whistle of breath through her lips. She is _tiny_ , her body unfamiliar. 

For a moment, all she can think is _I will have to learn to handle a sword all over again_ ’. It is a thought out of place, a sudden burst of annoyance, and it startles her out of her mindless fear. The sheer ridiculousness if it is enough to bring her back to sanity. 

She is small, and could not carry a sword, let alone wield one as she is now. The floor is warm, the linens clean, the furs soft and thick. 

There is no mortal reason for any of those things. By mortal laws it is impossible, and Arya has long since ceased believing in the Gods. And still. 

She breathes deep and looks around. Her surroundings are familiar-unfamiliar, like memories forgotten. It takes her a moment to remember that this is _her_ room, nine years gone because she traded it to Rickon when he outgrew the nursery. It is not even the room she remembers leaving behind in Winterfell, the one she dreamed of every night away from it, but a simple child’s memory. 

Hiking up her dress above her knees - a dress! She has not worn a woolen dress to bed in years! - she gathers the skirt up in one hand and pushes the door open with the other. It does not even creak as it falls open. 

The hallway is empty. Arya’s changed body is not enough to entirely ruin years of training, at least. Her footsteps are silent, and she melts easily into the shadows cast by the flickering torches. 

That night she relearns the twists and turns of a Winterfell she had long thought burned away. Her feet retrace stone painfully familiar to her, and several times she bites back the tears that burn her throat. To see the skeleton of her home that lived in her memories for so long given flesh and form is painful beyond what she could have ever possibly comprehended before. 

She had dreamed of seeing Winterfell again. She did not imagine it would hurt so much. 

When she settles in to sleep that night, the sun just sending streaks of red across the sky, she speaks her prayers. “Joffrey. Cersei. Tywin. The Mountain. Meryn Trant. Ilyn Payne. The Tickler. Polliver. Armory Lurch. Weese. Chyswyck. Dunsen. Raff the Sweetling.” They are barely a weakness in the night, a whisper. The syllables are worn smooth by years and time and countless sayings, barely a thought going to their forming. 

She does not question their need to die twice. 

\- - 

 

The sun splashes a bright line across her face, winter weak and barely warm at all it seems. She has spent too much time amongst the Free Cities and in the South, and her Northern constitution has faded. She does not feel the cold, still, but the warmth of the sun does nothing to warm her like that of Braavos’. 

She rises with the sun, nearly falling out of the bed as she rolls to stand. The stone floor is rough but warm under her feet, sinking through her flesh and into her bones. _Home_ she thinks with a little wistfulness. 

A quick change of dress from her nightgown to a stolen shirt and loose pants of Bran’s and she’s heading out the door. Staying to the shadows and corners of the halls assures that the few men and women wandering in the midmorning do not see her. She still feels like a stranger to those halls. 

She heads to the kitchens to break her fast, not expecting to find anyone else there. Hoping, and in some part of her long thought gone maybe even praying, but there is no expectation. She had not expected to wake up, herself. She could not expect anyone else to, either. 

It is only by the grace of her training that she does not start when she sees her sibling huddled around the rickety kitchen table, the one that the cooks use to store things on, in various states of distress. 

Or, rather - not. 

Certainly Robb looks distressed, and Theon looks terrified, but the others seem to be lingering in some state of annoyance or joy. Rickon certainly looks frustrated, but Sansa, Sansa looks nothing less than overjoyed. 

“So,” Arya starts, but she has long forgotten polite conversation. 

Bran finishes for her. “We’re all here, though some of us are more confused than others. Alive and well-” He spares a glance for Reek, hunched over and whimpering softly. “Physically.” 

There is still the question of which of them returned, of course, of who made it through. She can feel the magic swirling around them, barely at the edges of her underdeveloped seer senses, the curse that now chains their souls. The price reaped from each of them for a second chance. 

Still, she smiles. The silence that has been wrapped around her like a cloak since her awakening lifts some, and she feels her voice freed. “It is good to see you again, Robb. Your death was if nothing less badly timed.” And it is like the old rage has faded away, rubbed dull by her death. 

And their family, their pack, once broken and now again reunited, settles. A tension she had not been aware of before breaks, and a giggle, then a full belly laugh bursts free of each of them. They are together, Arya thinks, and they are happy. All the rest can be dealt with later.


	2. TYRION

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyrion awakens.

TYRION

He should be dead. It’s his first thought when he awakes in his now-unfamiliar bed, swaddled in silks he has not felt for years in a room that is not the one he died in. 

It is only the half-remembered prayer and the taste of salt and smoke on his lips that keeps his panic silent. His head spins as he lays there in his bed, shivering with fear and fingers digging into his sides. The canopy of his bed is red, red as blood and fire, and he cannot stop staring at it. 

Eventually, when the shadows from his window grow shorter and the light brighter, he rises from his bed. He performs his morning ablutions with little joy, moving as a marionette does when handled by a novice, with short, jerky actions and no humanity. He does not feel human, now, but rather like an Other, cold and dead. 

He should be dead. He feels dead. 

Damn that child for bringing him back. Damn every one of them. 

Dressing is done without the faint joy it had brought him years before. He does not care for what he wears, done not want to impress the viper in lord’s clothing waiting outside his rooms. Lannister is not the house of lions; all of them were born snakes, cruel and poisonous. 

It comes to him, then, that while he is no longer a Lannister he was still born a snake in lion’s skin, and a smile twists his lips. A Lannister pays his debts, and he has a lot of debts owed. 

So he dresses with a renewed energy but still no joy, his weapons learned by necessity held close to his chest. He looks in the mirror only once, to confirm his thoughts. There is no scar stretched across his face, and his nose is whole. A hand sweeping across his features confirms this as reality, and not simply a trick. “Ah, those girls are cruel ones, they are.” 

Waddling out of his rooms, he intends to attend to his duties. He has plans to make, after all, and the responsibilities his father gifted him had never been entirely engaging. Doing them twice over would be even less so. 

Breaking fast first, of course. Coming back to life is hungry business. 

The hallways are filled with people, and those people stare at him. This is not an unusual business, though he doubts that it is for the same reason as it usually is. He must be an unfamiliar sight, he realizes, up as he is hours before noon. 

In the before he would have been up long before this, if he had slept at all, attending those duties that he could not thrust onto those under who would more gladly take them. He had been - he had been much, before his death. Now he is less, and less happy for it. 

Casterly Rock is an unwelcoming place to return to. Idly, Tyrion wonders when they arrived, for he has not yet seen a marker for the time. Before the death of Ned Stark, at the least, and after Robert’s rebellion. Not before ten years past, as that would be beyond Rickard’s age, and not less than six, as it would defy one of the requirements of the magic. Too large of a window, in his mind. Silently he curses the inexactness of magic. 

There is a wealth of food spread across the table, the summer fare that he had expected. Fresh fruit, fresh bread, slabs of steaming meat on platters and steaming bowls of oatmash, more than he and his father and all the royal members of the Rock could ever eat by themselves. There’s more heaped on the lower tables, though the best cuts are theirs. 

Tyrion cannot help but sneer, however quietly, at the waste before him. Long years of war and winter have left him with a taste for frugality, a fear of waste. He does not see how his father, who has lived through more winters and more wars than he, could condone such a thing. And yet, also, he knows that his father had -has - not faced a winter as long as theirs nor one with such cruel monsters, and has no true frame of reference, nor the knowledge of what is to come. 

He takes his place at the table. He has not eaten his fill in a very, very long time, not since the never ending winter came, and to see so much when he is used to so little is wondrous. Tyrion fills his plate with meat and fruit - fresh, so fresh, the kind you cannot find in winter’s cold - and a bowl of oatmeal. 

His uncles are staring. Tyrion tries not to take offense at it. 

It is Tywin who speaks, of course. “I’d not expected you up this early,” he says. It is an admonishment for his usual late rising, and a silent demand for an explanation. The dwarf knows his father’s game well. 

“Ah,” Tyrion says. “I thought it a good time for a change.” A lie, and both he and his father know it. Not the other’s in the dining hall, already half-filled with men still trickling in, not the people at the high table, but him and his father alone. He wonders if the old lion will challenge him on it. 

He does not. “It is good that you are finally taking your duties as the son of a lord seriously, Tyrion,” the man praises. A backhanded compliment. “Mayhap we will find a place for you yet.” 

Tyrion smiles, and pops a peeled orange wedge into his mouth. It burst, sweet and citric, on his tongue. “Mayhaps we will yet, father.” 

Silent, he promises, _Before these days are gone, I will watch you burn in dragon fire._


	3. SANSA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plans begin.

SANSA

After breaking fast, the seven children of Winterfell decide that speaking in private is more important than lessons. Their change from the young children they were the day before to the adults in young bodies they are today is too obvious to hide. It is better they have time to speak than wasting whatever chance they may have on trying to hide it. 

Sansa is the one that recommends the broken tower. She is young again, tiny hands and tiny body, but her mind has not shrunk to match. 

She can’t help but steal glances at Robb out of the corner of her eyes. He’s... he’s not what she had expected. The boy in her memories is permanently fourteen, long limbed and russet haired, bright and innocent. Even as she knows that her brother lead an army, she had never seen him, and had never been able to reconcile the two ideas of him. 

The boy who stands before her now has their father’s eyes. Not the color, no, they share their mother’s coloring, but the _look_ in them, that is their father’s. A look she had long grown familiar with, by the end. 

Now he is ten, and now he is sixteen. The same age as Arya. 

He’s an impossibility. “You weren’t suppose to come back,” Sansa says. She’d fallen back as the others hurry ahead, even Jon and poor, broken Theon. 

Robb’s steps stutter, but he doesn’t stop walking. “I was shot through the heart,” he says, and his child voice is at odds with his adult’s tone. “My wife was stabbed. My child was killed before they could take their first breath.” 

“They put Grey Wind’s head on your body and paraded it around like some great prize.” Sansa voices duly, feeling suddenly far away from her body. And then she smiles, sharp and cold, and says, “We killed them all.” 

He nods, a short dip of his chin. He’s not happy, Sansa can tell, not angry or sad but simply not happy. Then again, he was dead. The only one of the Stark children to die. 

She wonders if he feels left behind. 

“Rickon was ten. He must be frustrated, being so little now.” Sansa says. 

“...Did he look like mother or father?” Robb asks. His voice is hoarse, and Sansa can better see the agony hidden by his cold disposition as they step out of the castle proper. The northern sun cuts thin, pale light across his face. 

He swallows, blinking at the sudden brightness. 

“Neither. Or, rather, both. Sometimes, though, oh sometimes I would look at him and I thought that he was a stranger. That I’d forgotten what mother and father looked like entirely.” She is careful not to say, _And that made me so happy._ She does not think her brother would understand. 

They walk the rest of the way in silence, watching Arya and Bran play fight with each other, watch Jon bounce Rickon in his arms. So happy, she thinks, even as they slip into the broken tower, climb the cracked, crumbling steps to the top. 

“There was a spell. Everything was going wrong, and Bran found a spell.” Sansa murmurs, keeping her voice low as to not let it carry. “It was suppose to bring back someone as a champion of the gods.” 

“It worked a touch strangely,” Robbs says, voice filled with a sort of dry humor. 

Sansa laughs, head thrown back and shoulders shaking with the force of it. It feels like relief, like the first breath of air after being locked within a stone tomb. “Yes, it did.”


	4. BRIENNE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne receives a letter.

BRIENNE

She has been awake several days when she receives the raven. 

Her hands shake when she spots it from her rooms, the familiar blood red ribbon tied thrice around its leg. It could be exhaustion - sleep has not come easily since her remembrance, and her younger body is not as used to the trials of her elder self - and she hurries out to the rookery. 

The people stare as she goes past, though whether at her men’s clothing or the sword strapped to her hip she knows not and cares less. Her heart beats wild in her chest, excitement buzzing in the tips of her fingers, prickling her scalp. It rises up in her throat as she enters the rookery, choking, and it feels something like fear, too. 

Maester Gorin smiles at her as she rushes into the rookery tower, and Brien, even in her hurry, smiles back. “Hello and good morn, Maester,” she says, ever polite. 

“Hello my dear Lady!” The Maester replies, loud and jolly. His fat jiggles as he speaks, double chin and vast belly heaving. He is a happy man, kind and wise. “Might I ask your business here today?” 

When she looks at him she sees his rot-swollen corpse, flesh yellowed and swollen tongue lolling out from between fat lips like a purple worm. 

The lady knight shudders despite the warm morning. “Have you by any chance received a letter from a raven with a red ribbon around their leg?” The rookery is warm, a tall, circular room that was once a short watchtower before it had been repurposed, now ancient and weathered. 

“I do believe I have,” the Maester says. Moving his huge bulk with surprising speed from behind his desk of papers, he hustles to the window where the newly-arrived ravens perch in their window. He goes along the line, examining them with quick thoroughness, until he reaches the fifth-from-last. “Ah! Here we go, my dear, this is the fellow. Not one of ours, though, could name every one of our ravens, so...” And he here concentrates on divesting the raven of it’s ribbon wrapped parcel, perhaps a touch too carefully. “A lover, perhaps? Or a paramour?” His voice rises and falls with just hidden joy and laughter; the idea of anyone loving her must seem ridiculous to him. Brienne is too aware these days of her own lack of beauty. 

But the Maester could not have said such to hurt her. She hears no malice in his voice, reads none in the set of his shoulders. Simply a man unaware of the hurt of his words, a casual act of cruelty he’s barely aware of. “No,” she says, a word that is half a bark. 

“Mmm,” he says, and turns to hand the letter to her. “Of course, my dear lady, of course. Well, whoever they are they didn’t have much to say. I’ll have this bird off in a few hours, if you want to send a reply. Just come down to the rookery before midday meal and tell me and that’ll be all taken care of, dear.” Wrinkles, carved deep into his skin by age and experience, deepen more as he hands her the parcel. “Whoever he is, he’s a, excuse my language, but a damn lucky lad. Just remember that, lass, he’s a damn lucky lad, and I have an extensive collection of poisons.” 

This startles a laugh from her, a sound of joy so pure it surprises her. “No, Maester, there isn’t anyone. No one at all.” Not any more, at least, and even that had never come to true fruition. 

She leaves with a weak smile and a shallow bow - not a curtsey, not ever, not to her queen and not to her fellows - parcel clutched tight in her left hand. She does not stop until she is safely ensconced in her rooms, settled on the broad windowsill that overlooks Tarth’s glittering blue waters. Beautiful, but she has no eyes to spare for it. 

The parcel is light, a cleverly folded piece of paper concealing a thin lump. She unfolds it carefully, knowing that with Tyrion’s spiteful streak he might just have hidden something sharp for careless hands to stumble painfully upon. It comes apart with ease in her hands, dropping a flat, thin piece of wood into her palm. Square, the length and width of her thumb but thin as the paper in her left hand, it is a rich honey wood with a lion painted on it with gold leaf, chips of jade set for eyes and a single black pearl hung below it by a little silver chain and setting. A little hole has been bored into the top - a medallion for a necklace, she realizes, breath caught in her throat. 

She doesn’t give a damn what it’s for. 

Her fist is closed. The paper in her hand is crumpled when she opens it again, but the words are still easy to make out, thin and spidery from a hand well used to writing. “I hope you enjoy the necklace,” it says, and she shapes the words with her mouth as she reads them, as if that would make them more real, concrete. “A lovely bauble for a lovely lady.” 

And, below that, “I do so hope you remember me.” 

So, Tyrion remembers. 

A sob rips itself from her throat, bloody and raw and relieved, a warrior who has been sent to war alone and come upon a comrade willing to help. 

“Oh, thank the gods,” she says, fervent and between heaving gasps, “Thank the gods.” Tears blur her vision and she tastes blood like a piece of copper ran over her tongue, hope so thick in her chest she’s bent over with the pain of it, right there in front of her window overlooking the sea. 

She cries until it’s gone away and then she wipes her face with her sleeve, the snot from her nose and mouth and the tears in the creases of her face leaving dark marks in the blue cotton. Know she looks a fright and not caring in the least, she stands and fetches a ribbon from her rare-used vanity. 

It takes several minutes to find a blue ribbon, her hands steady but her vision blurred, fingers numbed. When she does she takes it, walking with false calm to the study attached to her rooms. She does not have to think of her message, the end to their code burned into her mind like fire. 

When the ink has finally dried she curls it up with agonizing care, fingers more delicate than they had been but not truly gentle by any meaning of the word, and seals it with a dollop of red wax, leaving it crestless. She can not afford to leave any evidence of her identity. 

And then she’s off again, rushing through the halls and back to the rookery. There’s nothing calm about her now, nothing ineffective. No worries for propriety, no thoughts of others, just pure visceral fear and hope twisted sickeningly in her chest, bile building in the back of her throat. 

The letter she sends off is wrinkled, a touched smashed and tied sloppily, but the blue ribbon ‘round the raven’s leg is like a beacon in the night, brilliant as sapphires. Her breath is shaky, her hands trembling, but none of it with fear. 

When she returns to her chambers she strings Tyrion’s ribbon through the hole in the medallion and ties it round her neck. Then she settles at her desk with a thick stack of papers and set of quills, digs out the bright blue ink that had been her name day gift some years back. She has letters to write.


	5. MARGAERY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaery _always_ gets what she wants.

Oh, how utterly _boring_ Highgarden is. She can’t _stand_ it, how every day is just like the last, how everyone looks at her like some silly _girl_ , won’t let her do anything at all. 

Margaery takes a dainty bite of cake, savouring it. Whatever Highgarden lacks in excitement and general entertainment it makes up for with food. Cakes, painted pretty and unadorned, bite sized and as large as her head, four tiered and single layered, covered in fruit and sugar confections. Fowl, at least fifty different types, roasted and baked and fried and honeyed, encrusted with nuts and stuffed with fruits and breads. Game as well, rabbit and beef and boar and - 

“Dear! Now, now, Margaery, if you continue on like that you’ll do nothing but make yourself sick.” Grandmother scolds softly, iron wrapped in worn cotton. 

The girl looked down at her brimming plate, then at her grandmother, then at her fork, held precariously in her delicate fingers. “No I won’t, Grandmother.” 

She’s quite good at pacing herself, making every last bite count. 

Strawberry cake melts on her tongue, sweet icing and red jelly coating the insides of her mouth. She licks a bit caught at the corner of her lips, savours how much sweeter it is when there’s less of it. 

Wants to laugh at the _irony_ at it, but instead takes another bite of cake. 

Grandmother _tut-tuts_ softly, shaking her head. Her hair is covered by blue wrap today, delicate silver embroidery around the edges. It makes her seem soft and sweet, like clouds of whipped cream piled on a poisoned pie. “You’ll get _fat_ if you keep on like that, girl, and then where would you be? We can still find you a husband, but you’ll never get to be queen with a paunch.” 

“Don’t worry so much Grandmother,” Margaery sighs, feeling her disposition sweeten as the icing on her pale green cake. _However had they achieved that color?_ she wonders, feeling carelessly happy. “I’m working it off, rest assured. I’ll be attractively lithe and beautiful no matter what I eat.” 

“And how is that?” 

“Why, because I’ve taken up the art of knife work of course. A lady cannot be expected to depend only on the _men_ in her life.” 

Grandmother gasps, a hand over her heart. “Whyever would you do _that_ for? Our dear knights not enough for the future queen of the Seven Kingdoms?” 

“Now, now, grandmother, nothing of the sort! But I got the idea from this lovely lady from Tarth, ugly as a dog but loyal to a near fault, who plans to become a lady knight!” She laughs softly, slips another bite of cake in her mouth. Thinks of Brienne, brave and golden, dressed all in blue with Oathkeeper at her side. 

The sword is lost, but it was never the sword that made the warrior. 

Grandmother sniffs delicately, swipes a lemon cake from their tray. She hasn’t touched them; they sit on their silver tray, twelve - now eleven - perfect little yellow-iced cakes, slices of lemons like full moons pressed into their tops, crusted with sugar. “So you’ve decided to follow the example of a woman who is more man than girl, then?” 

“Why I never! _Grandmother_ , of _course_ not. I’ve decided to follow the example of history - a woman who cannot protect herself has little chance to stand against men, murderers and rapists. _There be monsters here_ , after all.” 

“And whatever gave you the impression that you might need something like that, eh? Those stories you’ve been reading these past weeks, or the bard’s songs, or those nasty little boys bothering you again?” They each take a bite of their cakes, chew and swallow with perfect synchronicity. Grandmother sips her tea, grimaces and stirs in another spoonful of sugar. Margaery chases hers with mead, sweet with a bitter aftertaste. It makes her teeth ache.

“No, Grandmother. Not that.” 

“Then what? I need _something_ to convince your parents to let this continue. Gods know they won’t be oblivious for long - your mother, at least. Your father’s a damn idiot. But your mother, now, she’ll figure it out soon. I know I would have. You’re not nearly as subtle as you think you are.” 

“What has been the reason for anything these last fourteen years, grandmother? Hmm?” 

“The war. But you must know _that_ nasty business is long over. You’re too young to even remember it!” 

“Not the war, Grandmother.” 

“Then...” 

“Lyanna Stark, Grandmother. The woman who brought the Seven Kingdoms to their knees and sparked a revolution that actually succeeded. The only woman I know that has truly changed the world - by the raping hands of a Targaryen man.” 

Grandmother eats the rest of her cake in slow, careful bites, unbothered by the cruelty playing behind her eyes. She saw a war, yes, but she has seen many wars. Has seen the results of many wars. “Well,” she says as she wipes the icing from her fingertips. “I cannot deny that is a good reason. Better one than I’d thought you’d come up with, anyways. You’ll continue your lessons, then, and I’ll keep it from your parents for a while longer. And if you can convince _them_ , girl, then you’ll not have to worry about living your days at court.” She chuckles, a bubble of noise in the back of her throat. Then she settles firmly in her seat and cuts herself a slice of honey cake, placing it on a delicate glass plate. 

Fork scraping the glass of her plate, she gathers up the last bits of icing. Then she chooses a mulberry tart, picking it up with her fingers. Crumbs gather under her fingertips, at the corners of her mouth, the swell of her bottom lip when she takes a bite. The fruit is pleasantly bitter; it reminds her of winter winds and nights sitting by the fireside, stomach shrunk against her backbone and side curled into another’s soft curves, lost in a mess of limbs as she tries to out-maneuver a force of nature. 

Eating it in mincing, delicate bites, she turns her eyes to the garden around them. She’d missed flowers. “I want that lady,” she says after several minutes. “The lady knight. I want her. As my personal guard, when she’s skilled enough.” 

“Oh? Do you even know the name of this lady knight? Or are you just hoping to pull it out of thin air and rumors?” 

Margaery smiles, sharp and sly and too old for her young face. “Her name is Brienne of Tarth.” Thin fingers rub the blue ribbon threaded through the cuff of her dress, thoughtful and happy. “And I _want_ her.”


	6. JON

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A complication arises.

He touches his brother’s faces with wonder, tracing round flesh with soft fingers. The ache of old wounds has gone away; not faded by any magic or maester’s touch but truly gone, a wondrous sensation of bodily youth. 

“It is good to see you again, little brother,” he says. Rickon - so _small_ , all soft roundness, none of the sharp wildness he’ll no doubt grow into if they could only find Osha again to charge her with him - tucks his head under Jon’s chin, curls of auburn hair tickling his face. 

A blanket is dropped over his shoulders, heavy wool that itches his exposed skin but settles with a comforting weight on his back. He smiles at Sansa, grips Rickon tighter as he squirms. “And good night to you, sister dear.” 

“He should have been put to bed hours ago, Jon. He’ll be an absolute hellion in the morning, now.” Sansa scolds, but she’s laughing in that quiet way she’d learned, bright and sweet. “And you’ll not be the one to have to deal with him.” 

Rickon pouts. “Nat liydle, Sahdsa.” And then, fighting with his tongue and his own incoordination, he smacks Jon’s cheek with a tiny palm. The other curls into the dark material of his elder brother’s night shirt, soft and warm. “Tahn. Old ‘nuff stah up.” 

“That’s what I think!” Jon cries out jokingly, adjusting his hold on the boy. Both his hands just barely wrap around the boy’s torso, but that they can do that at all is amazing. “Now, Sansa, what news have you that it must be given so late at night?” 

His dear sister sweeps from the door where she’d retreated after delivering her blanket to look out his narrow window, blocking out the stars and sky. One little hand rests on the sill, the other clutching in a fist at her side. The moon reflects white on her hair, makes her pale skin glow. “A letter from Margaery. That makes the Baratheon, the Tyrel, the Tarth, and the Lannister. The lady of Myr and the dragon cannot send word as of yet, so we must work under the assumption that they have not returned. That makes twelve.” Her voice is quiet, and Jon shudders, thinks of the last time he heard that voice. How the sky had filled with ashes and the waters of the Narrow Sea went red with blood. 

“That’s great, isn’t it? The more people we have the better?” 

“Think. For a moment, just think, Jon. How many gods do we follow? How many gods are there? The Seven. The God of Light. The Drowned God. The Many-Faced God. The Old Gods. Twelve of us. One for the the God of Light, one for the Drowned God, one for the Many-Faced God, one for the Old Gods, and then one for each of the Seven. Eleven, Jon. _Someone is here who should not be_. And if one came back, how many more? One champion for every God, and how many Gods are there?” Her voice quivers, but she stands steady, northern gown glowing under the lamp light.

“More than we could count, I guess.” Rickon has gone still and scared in his hands, mind no doubt spinning with the possibilities Sansa has laid out before them. 

“Hundred - thousands - of people, each one graced with their god’s favour, memories, knowledge that they should never have,” and here her voice cracks, “And we know _none_ of them.” 

Jon reels back like he just took a punch to the face. “How?” He breathes out. And ugly sort of idea has taken form in his head, pieces coming together like some horrible puzzle of Tyrion’s. “Oh, no,” he murmurs, throat tight. 

The picture is forming, of thousands of people gone insane, of thousands trying to change the future to their own advantage, of losing control of an already tenuous situation. “Have you spoken to Bran?” He asks. 

“He told me. We can’t control this, Jon, it’s gotten too large. It was too large to start with.” She turns to look at him, blue eyes large on her pale, round face. “Jon, I told you because I think we need to speed things up. We need to-”

“We need to leave Winterfell.” It’s like an icicle to the gut, a gust of wind atop the wall, cold and cruel and painful. He only just got his home back, only just had his siblings returned to him. He’s beginning to think that they’re destined to be pulled apart. 

“Not yet. Not quite. But we need to make plans to. We cannot stay. We cannot let this play out as we had planned. There simply isn’t the time.” She smooths out her skirts, then smiles reassuringly at her brother. “You and Bran may be heading over the wall long before you had thought. And Arya...” 

And here Sansa laughs, easy and relieved, though her features are still tight with worry. “She’s perhaps the only one I wouldn’t worry about. She’s itching for a fight, I can see it.” His sister takes a seat beside him on his bed, pulling Rickon into her lap and lightly tickling his sides. “Without anything to take up her time she’s resorted to letting cats loose and chasing them. I don’t even know where she’s getting them anymore.” 

“Me?” Rickon asks, “Whahd abood me?” 

“You, Rickon, will have to keep an eye on Winterfell for us, alright? Winterfell and Reek, those are your job.” Little Rickon nods, all quiet solemnity, before yawning. “Bed time,” Sansa calls, and hefts the boy into her arms. “Auggggh, you’re big!” She says, and totters out with the boy in her arms. 

When the last flutter of her skirts have slipped out of sight, the boy - man? He no longer knows - flops back on his bed. “Oh,” he groans, “What are we going to do?” 

He thinks of the pyre’s that in the last days never stopped burning, of the taste of oily smoke in his mouth and how the sky had been dark with clouds and smoke. Everything he’d lost, the _world_ ending. Of how cold it was on the Wall and the sleep he couldn’t allow himself to have and how _human_ he used to be. He thinks of dragons and ice and death, and takes a deep, deep breathe until it feels like he’ll burst, and then lets it out on a slow trickle of air. 

“What it worth it?” he asks the empty room. 

Outside, the wind is whistling, and he thinks for a second, a moment, that they are saying something. But that would be ridiculous. The Old Gods don’t speak to him.


	7. BRIENNE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A party is planned.

When Brienne sits with her father for their evening meal, she is hyper aware of the token around her neck, hanging by a braid of red, yellow, grey and green ribbon; tokens of her allies. She waits in tense silence for her father to speak, so nervous that she cannot even eat. Her breath is short and she stares at her full plate, the rainbow of food laid out on it. 

A breeze stirs her short hair. Her father’s fork clinks against the china plate as he stabs a piece of goose with it, face still as stone. Her father has never been one for words - had taught her the value of action, instead, with his bluntness and quiet ways - but she wishes for nothing more than the man to speak. His silent serenity is a discomfort. 

“It suits you.” He says abruptly, but cannot look at her. 

“What?”

“The clothes. They suit you.” He says. 

Brienne sits straighter in her uncomfortable, hard backed chair. Her new clothes, a fine grey tunic that ends at her knees and a pair of green pants tucked into calf boots, were hastily tailored to fit her form by the harried tailor Adrian, whom had in another life tailored and designed all of her clothing. She feels comforted by it now, in clothing that looks and fits correctly for the first time in the several days she had been awake. “Thank you, father.” 

Their private dining hall, a pavillion overlooking the blue seas surrounding their island, is quiet. She looks out at the sky, open and cloudless, tastes the sweet wind coming off the waters. They served fish, this supper, seared bass that nearly melts in her mouth. 

She would have preferred battered and fried cod, oil on her fingers and her mouth. With fried potatoes and onions, too, if she were to be honest with herself. Utterly delicious. 

They continue to eat in silence. Brienne moves on to the soup, a mussel and scallop stew that was meant as their main course. She savours each bite; the recipe is unique to a favoured cook that will die in a year’s time from falling off a cliff, if she doesn’t stop it from happening. She had missed it. 

“Father,” she says finally, setting aside her spoon. “I want to host a turney, here in Tarth. My training has gone splendidly, and if you wish to ask my teachers then the would tell you the same, you would only need to ask -” 

“My daughter,” her father interrupts. “That you are doing well in your studies is wonderful, but I truly must ask what this is about. A turney? In Tarth?” He sets down his spoon, shaking his head softly. “Brienne, what has ever brought this on? Not two moons ago you refused to be fostered out, refused even the ideas of meeting with the other Lords and Ladies.” He smiles, a quiet old thing. “I believe your exact words were ‘I refuse to waste my time with those dunderheaded wilting flowers’?” 

Her shoulders draw up, face flushing. Such a childish thing to say! “Well, yes,” she starts. “But opinions change. I would - that is, I am hoping - that participating in the tourney would allow me to find a house to pledge myself in service to. One that would take me.” She ducks her head, hand coming up to rest on the braided ribbons around her neck. The past weeks had allowed her to add a green and grey ribbon to the red, though no other pendants had been sent, something for which she is glad. Only Tyrion would think to include such a - a childish prank to his message, making people believe she is being courted by some anonymous lion! 

The Lord of Tarth’s eyes dance with merriment. “Oh? And this has nothing to do with the lion ‘round your neck, now, does it?” She flushes a deeper, splotchy red and he laughs, loud and merry like she hasn’t heard for years. 

“Whether it does or not, father,” and it does _not_ , “I would still implore you to think about it. A tourney on Tarth could bring in new revenue, help foster ties between the families, and -” 

He raises one hand, cutting her off with silent and absolute authority. “Of course, Brienne. We will begin preparations tomorrow. Now, about that lion... I would not be expecting a suit for you soon, would I?” 

“Father!” 

"Now, now, it is time to think of your future, Brienne." He waves his spoon in the air, as if to draw a picture of her future. "You've not grown any younger, my dear. A lady knight is all and swell, but I want grandchildren!" 

Brienne snorts, shakes her head. Her short hair tickles her ears when she does, brushes her cheekbones. The flush has already faded from her face. "No simple man can defeat me in a duel, and I will not marry any man who can fall beneath my sword." She will marry no man at all; her mastery of Oathkeeper is matched by no living man. Was matched by no living man. 

There is, perhaps, two men who could defeat on a fair field. Neither of them ever will.

"Ah! Not on Tarth, no, but I am should a man outside our island's shore would succeed in doing so." Brienne makes a noise of agreement, and ladles herself another bowl of stew.

"There is always someone better." 

"Which is why we will be making the grand prize of the tourney your hand in marriage. After all, a man who can defeat not just every challenger he's faced against but you as well must be the man you will agree to marry?" His smile is downright wily, now, and he eats his spoon of stew with a horrible look of self-satisfaction. 

Brienne can't find anything to say against it. Her terms had been laid out long before her return, when she was a foolish youth who had faced disappointment and betrayal too many times. She would marry any man who can defeat her in single combat. 

Damn her father! 

"Yes." She agrees because she cannot find a way to deny it. 

"Then the matter is settled! Your hand in marriage to any man who wins the tourney." He claps his hands together with finality. "Of course, it must be kept a secret - both your participation and the prize of your hand are not traditional parts of a tourney, and we do not want a single contender to avoid it!" He sounds almost painfully joyful. 

"Of course, Father." 

Oh, they are in trouble. 

Brienne has a letter to send. 

She simply hopes Stannis' damn honor would allow them to do what must be done. Brienne has no intention of being married.


	8. REEK

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An escape is planned.

Everything is quiet. 

The night is dark and full of terrors. 

He misses the fire lady, misses sparks against his scars. 

He has no scars. 

Skin smooth, pale. A _thing_ between his legs.

_theons favorite toy, he cried when I took it away_

“Theon theon theon,” the Wolf Children call him. They bay and howl and scratch at him, make him want to hide away. 

He tried to sleep in the kennels but the Boy King brought him to his room instead. “Theon, the kennel isn’t your room,” he scolds, and Reek thinks he’s going to be hit but he’s not and it’s not _real_ it’s just another _trick_ , but the other shoe hasn’t dropped yet and he’s so _tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop_. 

They keep treating him like a man but he’s a toy a dog a nothing and he just wants to be Reek he _doesn’t want to betray them again_. 

Sansa curls his hand in hers and she tugs him to the table. “Theon,” she says in her little wolf-bird voice, “Theon, it is time to break our fast. You must come to the table and eat with the rest of the Keep.” He shivers, shudders, but does not pull away. 

_Ramsay would be angry, _he mutters, stutters, so quiet they’re not words at all but breaths of air, nothing. And then, louder, loud enough to be heard, “Not Theon. Reek. Reek. I am _Reek_.” __

__“No, no,” Sansa, sweet Sansa, little wolf-bird with fire in her heart to equal the one blazing in her hair, says._ _

__Bran at her other side shakes his head, snorts. “Let him eat with the dogs,” he says, and his voice is iron, and salt, and cold. The boy with fire in his hair and and a green, green heart is only cold to him. Fire quelled by salt._ _

__She settles him on a table. She lays a plate in front of it, piles it with two little silver fishes and a half loaf of black bread, a pint of dark mead in a wooden cup and a handful of tart berries. “There, now,” she says, “Eat, and remember your name is Theon. At this table, with these people, you are not Reek. You are Theon. Can you remember that?”_ _

__He nods, up-down-up-down, remembers that it should hurt and stops. Reek should hurt, Reek is always in pain._ _

__Sister Dear, Stranger’s Daughter snarls something in their wolf-words, harsh but quiet._ _

__The hall is empty and dark, the sky black. The night is long and full of monsters._ _

__Five stars chase away the monsters, sit with the monster-child and the green boy. “The tourney,” cries the little brave boy with the slur and the starlight in his eyes, blue in his hair to match his eyes._ _

__“Yes,” says Arya, “We’ll go to the tourney, and fuck what Mother and Father have to say of it!” Her voice is the harsh cry of a crow, a horse’s bray of sound. She pumps tiny fists in the air, and Theon watches with fear. _Will they hit Reek?_ he thinks. _ _

__They don’t._ _

__“But,” says the Lord of Snow, “We can’t. What will they do when they find us gone? We’ve no excuse for disappearing for a fortnight or more.” He shakes his shaggy head, and the curve of his neck reveals braided ribbons._ _

__The Little Lord of Green Things says, “We do. Or will. We’ll just tell them the truth.”_ _

__“What truth? That we’re attending a tourney in Tarth that’s really just an excuse to figure out how many of us remember and then plan out what we’re going to do next in the act of ousting a good portion of the Lannisters, de-throning Robert and having the Dragon Queen take the throne?” Sansa says incredulously._ _

__Children’s boy nods, takes a draw of mead and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Not quite. But tell them we want to go to the tourney, wheedle them, make it a big deal. And then when they deny us, disappear into the night. Leave a note telling them we’re going anyways, and we’re home free!”_ _

__The plan is quickly agreed upon, details ironed out._ _

__Reek has stopped paying attention to their words. Watching them is much better - the dance of their eyes, the fall of their hair, hands talking with their mouths. The wolfish tilts of their heads and the quiet growls they do not know they are making._ _

___Wolf children_. _ _

__“Theon,” says Sansa. He had not noticed them finish their plans, but he does when Sansa speaks. “Do you want to go with us, Theon?”_ _

__He flinches, confused and scared. Is this a new test? He does not like it._ _

__“Theon?”_ _

__“He can’t make the decision for himself,” Jon scolds his sister softly. “I’ve seen men like him on the Night’s Watch - little more than animals, when we get them. Can’t make a decision for himself, can’t do anything you don’t tell him to.”_ _

__“He _must_ learn how to think for himself again.” Sansa lays a warm hand on his shoulder. It burns like a brand through his jerkin. His skin is colder than the Winter Queen’s. _ _

__That touch decides for him, burning but not painful._ _

__“Reek... would like to go. Please.”_ _

__“See? He can make decisions by himself!” Sansa looks smug and Reek regrets his words immediately when the other Wolf Children look at him with hateful eyes._ _

__He shrinks down in his seat, head ducked, and decided he doesn’t want to go anymore._ _

__He can say nothing against it; his words have already been accepted._ _

__Reek swallows the bile in his throat and says nothing._ _


	9. STANNIS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A message received.

He receives the package a bare week before the tourney in Tarth, a slim envelope sealed with an unmarked dollop of red wax. 

There are three things inside the envelope: five black ribbons, the ones of a price even peasants can afford; a slice of candied lemon, bright yellow; and a scrap of black leather. He sets the ribbons aside to be sent of to the appropriate people, making note to send the Dragon Queen the true numbers of their returning. And the impossibility of those numbers, as well. It would not do for her to face troubles because a simple sea’s separation had choked off contact. 

Initiating contact with her had been the first risk of his return. When the ravens came bearing their messages of his companions he had known the task of first contact with the Queen and the Witch fell to him, and had taken the necessary precautions - a smuggler bought out, the Queen’s location tracked and the Red Woman’s temple located - and bought for himself a grey dove, which he gave to his daughter. 

Now he is standing in his solar, overlooking the crashing waves as they batter the cliffs. A seabird calls to another, and dark clouds hover at the horizon’s edge. He takes a deep, deep breath, and tastes salt and smoke. 

“Father?” Shireen calls from the doorway. She’s still - suddenly, in truth - a chubby, delicate rose of a child. Not beautiful, strong jawed and marred of face, but time had taught him a beauty that could not be seen. The same beauty of so many of the women he has come to know, of inner strength and honor and intelligence. 

He smiles, and though it is not kind he does his best to make it fatherly. 

His own Shireen is dead, burned upon a pier. He set her upon the wood himself, curled delicate hands around a wreath of pretty purple weeds and breathed in her ashes as she burned. 

“Yes, daughter?” He asks. He pats his knee in invitation for her to sit upon it. She takes it eagerly, little fingers curling into his shirt and little body settled against his, staring brazenly into his eyes. 

“Can I go to the tourney with you?” She asks. The greyscale that climbs up the right side of her face is astonishingly ugly in the mid-afternoon light, dead skin looking hard and flaky. 

The Lord of Storms End opens his mouth to tell her ‘no’; there are a thousand reasons why she should not go, should not ever leave his Keep. 

“Yes,” he says instead, unable to deny the shade of his daughter curled in his lap. “But you must study very hard before we go, so you do not fall behind in your studies, and when we are there you must be on your best behavior. Understood?” 

Her little head bobs up and down hurriedly, crying “Yes, yes Father, of course!” 

“Now go get one of the maids to help you pack, Shireen. We leave at dawn tomorrow.” 

She slips off his lap in a whisper of woolen skirts, bare feet slapping against the stone floor. Bowing at the door, he can hear the exact moment when she sheds the propriety she wears around him like a cloak and starts running down the corridor, whooping her excitement and babbling greetings to whoever is listening. 

When he is sure she is gone and not to return, he picks up the envelope again. With his thumb nail he separates the folds of it, letting it spreading it out flat on his desk. 

Small, pale grey letters line the edges of the paper, swirl across the page in disordered, senseless patterns. Only one who knows the mind of it’s author could make sense of the letter. 

The Lord Stannis knows her mind well, and her words are clear. 

Essos is at war.


	10. ARYA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya has a plan.

They hiked the two days to the White Knife, and then followed the river down by horseback to White Harbour, where they hitched rides on a small ship for the voyage to Tarth. That was three weeks, roughly, because they’d caught the tail-end of a storm that’d cut a week’s time off their expected arrival. 

When they left the ship they were seasick and tired, unwashed and aching. They were greeted with little fanfare, their identities unknown. Those with Tully colouring had taken the time to find hats to hide their striking hair, and those two with the Stark’s had felt the simple joy of being able to laugh at how ridiculous they looked. 

Robb and Jon had both come carrying steel, heavy as it is at eleven. The ill-fitting swords hang at their sides now, slim limbs hidden by layers of boiled leather and wool. They’re boiling under the heat. 

It’s the first tourney day, and the all of them look out of place. Too short to have true place, too dirty and ill-kept to be the daughter of any lord, but clothes too rich and bodies too fit to be street urchins. But they have grown adept at avoiding attentions the last few weeks, and the crowd barely notices the six of them slipping through the crowds. They push and prod until they’re standing at the railing of the jousting ring, peasants pressed in a hot mass of bodies around them. 

Arya takes a bite of mutton leg, snatched off a fat man’s plate when he was groping a poor serving woman’s ass. It tastes like vindication and rosemary, and grease leaves her lips and chin shiny. “Ith it gonna thtart thoon?” She asks Sansa. 

A horse whinnies out of sight, and a man in fool’s clothes steps out onto the jousting field.

“Now, apparently,” Sansa mutters, voice a low hum. Her blue dress, faded and worn and patched just as her sister’s is, is matched only by the faded grey piece of linen covering her red hair. White and pink shells glint at her throat and wrists, suspended by multicolored ribbons. She’s munching delicately on fried clams, licking the oil from her fingers after each one. 

Food in Tarth is excellent. 

“Greetings all from far and wide,” the announcer cries, “and welcome to this tourney in Tarth, in celebration of a bountiful summer!” A cry goes up, and the announcer raises one brightly clothed arm to silence them. “Now, the jousting will begin momentarily. Our first contestants, Ser Jon of House Bettley and Ser Arrik of House Erenford!” 

Two men on great, hulking horses line up at opposite ends of the field, each toting their house’s banner. Arya shakes her head at the sight, the two great black chargers and the oversized lances. “Think they’re compensating for something?” She intones drily.

“Arya!” Sansa cries, scandalized. The boys snicker, and Jon ruffles her dark hair. 

“Now now, little sis, we both know Arya’s _done_ worse than that, let alone said. Leave her alone about it.” He says, but there’s a shifty look in his grey eyes that Arya recognizes. It’s a look that belies brilliant, wonderful mischief in their future. 

The two men on the field ready themselves to charge. Arya finds the whole act rather boring, actually, much preferring the melee competition. 

This is largely due to the fact that she was allowed to enter the melee rounds, and not the jousting ones when she was a part of the honored Queens Guard. Participating in a sport is in her experience much better than simply watching it. Her jousting ban would have been up in the next six moons, if they had not left. It’s one of the few things she regrets. 

Turning away from the field, she gnaws the last of the meat from the mutton bone, tossing it aside. “I’m going to go check out the stalls,” she says. 

“Dragons?” Sansa asks. She’s watching the field with rapt attention, eyes following the men as they gallop towards each other. Arya holds up a coin bag. 

“Right here.” 

“Then enjoy yourself. And pick up a toy for Rickon? He was very upset at not being allowed to come with us.” She waves at her younger sister absently, assured that whatever trouble the girl might be thinking of getting into she could rightly get herself out of, as well. 

The former Queen’s Guard member nods, trotting away from the field with a little hop in her step. 

Bran follows her. “You’re not really going to just be exploring,” he says. 

“Of course not. I’m going to join the melee tournament.” She shakes her head at her brother’s foolishness, thinking for even a moment that she would pass up the opportunity to cross steel. 

He snorts, mutters something about bloody Braavosi assassins, and follows her. “You must have set this up when Sansa wasn’t looking days earlier,” he says. 

“When she was looking for an inn,” Arya admits. “But Robb and Jon signed up with me!” 

He shakes his head in fond exasperation. “And you have already committed yourself to this?” 

“Of course.” She pats her thigh, “I’ve bought weaponry and everything.” With stolen coin, yes, but still bought. Fine Braavosi daggers, and the thin leather armor she prefers, hidden beneath her ill-fitting dress and pants. “I am really off to checks the papers,” she admits. “You know, see who our opponents are. We’ve already bought our place in the tourney.” 

Tourney officials hadn’t even blinked an eye at the middle man they’d been forced to use, either, just taken their money and handed him the colored strips of paper that would show they’d bought their slots. It’s all rather ridiculous, and something Arya is looking forward to. 

“You are tiny,” Bran points out, “No one is going to think you are anything other than a dwarf or a child, and they will laugh you right off the field. Jon and Robb, too.” She snorts, darts around a group of laughing women fast enough her brother is forced to scramble to keep up with her. 

She finds nothing wrong with being thought a mummer, at this stage in the game. She’s known quite a few fine folk who were mummers and dwarves both. “Let them. They’ll know the danger of mummers and dwarves when we step out on that field and cut them down.” 

“Or you will lose, and our Lord and Lady Father and Mother will punish you doubly for entering the tourney and risking your lives for a lark.” 

“Or we’ll win and I get to claim that I won a tourney at age six.” The crowd has thinned out some, and they come upon the brilliantly blue tent from which she’d bought their slots. 

“Whose names are we looking for, anyways?” Bran asks. 

“Ah, Arren the Small, Joshua of Snowbuilt, and Robin of House Stark.” 

“Snowbuilt?” 

“We assumed no one would realize there wasn’t a Snowbuilt in the North, and Jon didn’t want to claim false fealty.” She shrugs, and darts through the scattering of hulking men blocking the wooden sign plastered with the slot assignments. 

There are six papers, arranged by event. Theirs is the third, to take place on the third day, and Arya finds their names quickly. “We’re teamed with Brienne in the melee,” she tells Bran. “And my first one-on-one is against a Jory of House Staedmon. Not a bad draw at all!” She grins, and it is both something feral and something happy, ill fitting on such a young face. 

But then, the solemn, chastising look on Bran’s is as well. “We have Stannis to worry about as well,” he admonished. “The man will never truly let a child fight, let alone one little older than his daughter. I would like to see you take the field when he learns of this.” 

“He never will -” 

A heavy hand settles on her shoulder. “Never will what, little Lady?”

She turns on her heel and draws her dagger by instinct, a flash of steel concealed in her palm. Heart beating in her throat she looks up, and up, at a shadowed, gaunt cheeked face. 

She only barely keeps from crying out his name. “What are you doing?” She hissed instead, and sheaths her weapon. 

“I saw you,” he says, “And decided it would be quite prudent to see the trouble you were getting yourself and your brother into.” 

“Fool of a man,” she curses at him, sounding silly with her little girl voice. She spits at his boots, all fire and anger. 

“Only as fool as you are, lady knight. Now come, and I will send someone to fetch your siblings as well.” The frown of his face is a familiar thing, unmoving as if having been carved from stone. She wants to curse him again. 

Bran, instead, takes her hand. “We will follow,” he says. “Our sister asked us to choose a toy for little Rickon; he is very disappointed he was unable to come with us.” 

He shakes his head, knowing very well that they mean to evade him and his men. “No. Come along; I will not chase after you two.” He holds out one large hand, and with reluctance Arya takes it. 

“Fine.” She grumbles. “But only because I am hungry, and knew this meeting was not far off.” His hand dwarfs hers, rough calluses scratching her skin. Sweat trickles between her shoulder blades; it is a hot day. 

“Good.” He says, and begins to make his way through the sea of tents and people. “Now, your Lady mother had quite the fit when she found you lot gone. Any care to explain that?” He sounds amused, if a touch annoyed, like their actions could do nothing but amuse him. 

“Oh, shut up Stannis.” Arya snaps. 

“Of course, little Princess.”


	11. BRIENNE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two Ladies meet under the cover of darkness.

Brienne

She greets the Lady Margaery not under the light of full day but rather in the shadows of night, hours after their feasting had been done and over with and introductions made. At her side is no one; there is only the two of them in the room. 

It is the Lady Margaery that breaks their thickened silence, a small, sharp grin splitting her face. A pale hand, soft and smelling slightly of bee’s wax, alights on her shoulder. She can feel it burning like a brand through the thin cotton of her shirt. “It is good to see you again,” she murmurs. 

“You as well, old friend.” Her cheeks flush a pale, blotchy red, but she does not look away. “And the others?” 

“I’ve shared news with Stannis, yes. And changes have been made, where they could; rumors spread of the Queen’s infidelity, a doubt in the heirs, forces being prepped. We have time.” The Lady sounds sure in this, hands settling in her lap. A curl of dark hair rests against the curve of one cheek, ornate Southron hairstyle coming undone in the late hour. 

Brienne is settled beside her, chairs pressed close together as to minimize the need for vocal volume. She shifts just the slightest bit away, now, almost imperceptibly. 

The Lady notices. 

“I’ve begun to gather my father’s forces and prepare for war. There is little to be done at this point; Tarth is neither particularly rich nor well populated, and can do little to change the events to come.” It is a fact she has come to accept, in the several month of her return: Tarth will not be instrumental in changing the world. 

The realization had been swiftly followed by the conviction that if Tarth will not be, Brienne will. 

From within the folds of her voluminous dress Margaery reveals a letter. The thin, brightly dyed paper is folded into the shape of a rose no larger than Brienne’s thumbpad, and when she accepts it there is the initial fear that she will crush within her grip, or rip it when she unfolds the delicate paper petals. 

She does neither; in a moment’s time the sheet has been unfolded in her palm, red so bright it glows under the moon’s dim light. Cramped, dark red letters fill the sheet in Bran’s spider scrawl, the result of years spent hunched over a desk, writing letter after battle plan after war report. 

“So the wolves are indeed here,” she murmurs. 

The moonlight cutting through the wide window paints the room in a series of silvers. Brienne watches the play of it across her hands when she adjusts the hold on the message, then with the slightest of sighs brings the paper to her nose to scent. Winter roses and smoke, and the strange, almost rotting smell of Arya’s ink. A true missive, then. 

She would not say she does not trust the once-and-never Baratheon Queen. She would not say she does, either. 

“Battle plans.” Margaery says, voice dry. She’s watching the moon through the window in apparent disinterest, cat eyes at half mast and mouth downturned and lax with drowsiness. “Or that is what I’ve gathered, from my own. The Lady is quite concerned with something, though she refused to write what, and I believe they wish to move up our already tentative timetables.” A worrying thought. They do want their efforts to be noticed before they are ready. 

Brienne gives a sharp nod, and stands with only the slightest rasp of the cotton of her pants brushing together. She brushes back her short shorn hair and tucks the paper in her pocket, straightens her shirt over her tightly bound breasts. A hat pulled over her hair hides her identity well; any servant or noble she should happen to meet on her way to her chambers would mistake her for a man with ease. “I will see you on the morn with a comprehensive plan to continue our effort, my lady,” she assures her companion. 

The moon paints her in stark relief, now, and Brienne remembers the songs they would sing of her beauty. Now, thirteen and flat chested, a girl’s gangly form sprawled carelessly on her chair, she can see how her form will change, fill out, become lovely. How she is already lovely, and how that will not change. “I will see you on the morn.” 

“Good night, Brienne.” 

“Good night, my Lady.” 

“Margaery. Call me Margaery.” 

“Margaery, then. Good night.” 

She takes her leave.


	12. ARYA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya meets a curious person while training.

Morn dawns with her preparing herself out of sight from the field. She’s found a stone pavilion cut into the cliffside leading to the blue ocean of Tarth, stripped down to a dark shirt and pants and leather armor, Braavosi daggers in hand. 

She follows the fluid steps of the water dance, moving through her paces slowly. Patient, fluid grace strains her young, untrained body as she follows steps long memorized, sweat soaking her hairline and gathering between her shoulderblades, under her pits and behind her knees. Every step kicks up dust and sand, and the smell of salt is calming, clean and clear like is so rare. 

“Girl!” A harsh, guttural cry rings across the pavilion. She turns quick on her feet, blades coming up to their start position, held shoulder length apart and at chest heigth. 

“Who’s there!” She yells. A great, hulking figure, backset by the rising sun, stands at the stairs. The edges shiver and smudge against the light, and she squints, unwilling to lower her guard. 

The man - with his great size he could be nothing else - takes two steps forward, sand and rocks crunching under his great feet. “I’m disappointed, girl. Knives like that and you prob’ly can’t hit the broadside of a fat wench.” A jerk of what might be his head but was too backlit by the sun to truly tell at her hands has her taking a step back, wary of the intruder. Her eyes are watering; she jerks her chin up and blinks them clear. 

“Don’t matter if I can hit a damn wench,” she snarls, “long as I can hit a fat ol’ fucker like you.” Bloody minded, she wonders if she could get away with cutting off something important and leaving him to limp off to wherever he came from. Likely not; he looks like a knight, and those are usually important enough to warrant some sort of investigation. Too bad. 

“Does if yer ever up ‘gainst a mean old woman demanding rent you don’t have,” the mystery knight says. He takes several step to the right, and so does Arya, until they’ve traveled in something of an half circle. He’s moved out of the sun for her benefit, inch by inch growing more discernible. 

It still takes several seconds to comprehend who he is. Dots and misshapen blots dance in her vision from staring at the sun too long, everything clouded by a layer of sickening green. Finally, when his form becomes clear, Arya cannot contain her grimace. 

She also cannot decide if it is one of regret or disgust. Either would be logical, and both often feel the same to her, a sickening, heavy pit settled just below her gag reflex. Hands tighten on her weapons, leather grips creaking under the force of her hold. 

“Hound,” she says. 

The word settles like a gauntlet thrown between them. She shifts her foot out slightly, leans her weight on the leg not bent, and tries not to think about the fact he knows she’s a girl. It’s the least of her problems. Sand crunches with every shift of her weight and she’s tense for attack, almost shaking with the anticipation for it. 

His shoulders tense but nothing more. He doesn’t even go for his sword, hanging at his side. Boiled leather creaks as he takes on step, two, towards her, but she doesn’t back down this time. The monstrous half of his face looks even worse in the half dawn light, the last fading vestiges of red and purple making it look almost freshly committed, blood dripping from one hooded eye and skin purpled like a flower petal crushed under a wagon wheel. A rather hideous effect, over all. 

“Now, girl,” he says. “Ain’t no reason to be like that.” He holds up his hands, palms out, showcasing scarred leather gloves and the beginnings of thick wrists. 

“There is _every_ reason t’be like this.” Her heart is beating too hard in her chest, sweat falling into her eyes. Teeth latch onto the inside of her cheek, worrying the thin skin. “Yer not known for mercy or kindness, Hound.” 

He bows his head in a quick nod, mouth curved up on one side in something between a sneer and smile. “That I am, little girl. But I’m also one o’ th’ Queen’s best, and I know damn well you ain’t moving well as you could be.” 

“And why would you help me?” Arya asks, suspicious. She knows the Hound, even as time has put distance between him and her memories, well enough to know he does nothing without reason to - reason usually being the promise of gold or blood. He would gain neither by helping her. 

The Hound takes two steps forwards, then several more faster than she had thought possible for a man his size, knocking her left leg in and straightening her back with rough hands faster than she can move away. A startled screech falls from her mouth and as she scrambles to get away, only long years of training keeping her from dropping her weapons on her quest to _get away from him_.

Scandalized and not-quite violated, Arya stares at the hulking man. “What the buggering fuck was that about!” She is suddenly and fiercely glad for the cloth mask pulled tight over her lower face, hiding her gaping mouth and flushed cheeks.

“Stance sucked shit. If I was a real opponent you’d be down in less time than it takes to spit.” And then he does spit, a hocked mass of mucus and saliva that splatters on the low stone wall behind him. “You won’t last two minutes on th’field with a stance like that.” Then he gestures her forward with a jerk of his hands and she goes, stiff limbed but willing. An impatient sneer pulls on the scarred side of his face. 

The cloth wrapped around the lower part of her face is damp and hot from her breath, and she wants to pull it away and gulp up fresh air but she doesn’t dare to in front of an agent of the Queen, no matter how reluctantly. She tugs the material away from her face in short, gentle jerks instead, feeling cool air seep in reluctantly. “Why help me?” She mutters sullenly, slipping back into position. 

He snorts, roughly shoves one hand down and the other up, kicking her feet until she moves them just where he wants them. The Hound is hands-one and impatient, and doesn’t answer her question for another half-mark, and by that time she’s nearly forgotten it herself. 

“You remind me of a little assassin down in Braavos, girl. Sharp little thing, she was, and angry as they come. Cold, too, the fucking bitch. Might be good t’see another one like her out in the world.” She glances to the left - he’s not gotten behind her even once, either from old habit or old instinct - in time to watch the roll of his shoulders under layers of chain mail and boiled leather. “Keep that form. Now take a step forward - not like that, you twit, you don’t want to overextend yourself - and shove them knives forward and up.” 

“Who was she?” 

“A move like that’ll go right up under a man’s chest armour. And she was no one. None of your business.” He shoves her hands down, “You move back to position soon as the move is done. You don’t want to get caught by another opponent like that.” 

Arya adjusts the hold she has on her knives, shoves her shoulders back because she’s started to hunch and goes through the move again, adjusts it for different imagined opponents. “Was she beautiful? Like a song?” It feels like something Sansa might say, but she can’t deny she’s curious. Three months a child and old habits have returned with a vengeance. 

“She was ugly as a horse.” He says. “And life ain’t like no song.” 

“I _know_ that.” She scowls - scowls, not pouts, because she is almost seventeen years of age now and pouting is not something the second in command of the Queen’s Guard does - and runs through the move one last time. 

“Good enough. Now this next one you’ll want to do if the first strike doesn’t take ‘em out: dominate knife to your opponent’s gut, the other one tucked in - that’ll be your defense, girl, keep an eye on that one - you want that other one to plunge forwards and to the side, cut open their stomach. Pull it in tight and then go for the throat. Most fighters don’t wear gorgets, the morons.” He shoves her into position again, but the adjustments are smaller this time. She thinks it’s more for the fact he’s getting tired of teaching her than any sudden advancement in skill. 

She slides through the move as instructed, and this time doesn’t flinch as he roughly corrects her. “You’re shit at double knives for planning to fight with ‘em in the tourney, girl.” 

“They’re not my usual weapon of choice, alright?” She adds a little flourish - in a fight it would tear up her opponent from the inside, cripple him with pain - and steps forward hard, finishing the move. The Hound hadn’t shown her that. 

Of course she didn’t _need_ his instruction. She’d been taught by the Faceless Men, and unfamiliar weapons or not she is skilled. 

“Then what is?” 

She sheaths her weapons. Slipping into a more comfortable stance, she swipes the sweat from her forehead with a pair of gloved fingers, slipping under her head wrap. “Bravoss sword - I learned the style of the water dance, rather than the steel of the Kingdoms.” Her style is the bastard child of the Kingdoms and the Free Cities, a hacking mess made smooth by foreign training. 

And then she bows low, left fist pressed into the small of her back and right over her heart, straightens and smiles, eyes scrunching up. “I am thankful for your help, Hound - Sandor Clegane.” She drops the lowborn accent and lets her voice take on the musical lilt of the Free Cities, soft as to be indistinguishable between Myr and Bravos, “Though I cannot say I have been entirely honest as to my identity.” She’s running before he can react, bounding down the crooked stone stairs and hurdling towards the beach, where she’ll slip back up the cliffs and to the tourney site, just in time for a quick rest before her match. 

The sun is shining strong overhead, and no doubt Stannis has noticed her absence, guested as to where she was. Her sister’s favor is tucked in one pocket, and a laugh burbles in her throat at the thought of telling her sister of her meeting with the Hound. She’d - Sansa - had held a certain _fondness_ for the man, though one only to be admitted in the dark of their shared tent, when the need to speak and be open snuck up on them. She’d be delighted to hear of the man’s softness, in this new, strange age. 

A softness! Oh, her sister would think it like a _song!_


	13. Jon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya does the bad thing.

The tourney is a wild, raucous event that feels not too unlike the wildling camps, with a heavy sort of energy hanging in the air. 

He has never felt like more of an outsider. 

“Fine day for a tourney,” Davos says. He’s been tasked with the keeping of him and his siblings, to prevent them from slipping away - all but Arya, who had escaped the Baratheon’s rooms in the early morning, and Sansa, who is with Stannis himself - and he has taken to the job with the grim solemnity and dry wit Jon knows well. “I’m guessing that’s your sister down there, then?” 

The aged smuggler is right; Arya is a tiny, dark figure amongst the hulking forms gathered in the pit for introductions, the only glimmer of color the copper at her hips. As the crier goes down the lines, Jon watches with growing anxiety. “I don’t know what you’re speaking of,” he counters, “Arya’s ran off to chase cats.” 

His sister is half-feral and wild, his sister is an assassin trained in Bravos, his sister is an _idiot_ and he should have stopped her. When they call out ‘Arren’ he feels utterly relieved, though if she were to be caught it would have been long before she’d entered the field. 

“Your sister’s Arren, then?” Davos asks, “Not bad looking out there, if a mite small.” 

Shereen, little dead Shereen who never got to be a princess, says “So that’s a lady down there?” Excitement buzzes in her voice, and she reaches up to scratch the dead, dry patches of scale on her face. 

“No, that’s just a small lad,” Jon lies. “ _Not_ Arya.” But the girl is already convinced, and she just gives Jon a secret, sweet smile. “And I don’t think he’s going to make it past the first round.” 

Huffing, Bran smacks his thigh. “ _I_ think he’s going to do great,” he says, and leans around Jon to look Shereen in the eye. “And I bet it’s Arya down there, too.” He smiles reassuringly at her. Bran and the girl had been close, Jon remembers suddenly, before she had died. Letters, mostly, until she had made her way up to the Wall to assist her father, when things in the South finally broke down. 

In the vaguest sense he remembers her being a bright, happy girl, Arya’s age but seemingly much younger. The other men of the Watch had liked her. 

Below, Arya and the Staedmon boy are facing off. It’s easy to see that despite the boy’s advantage in size Arya far outclasses him in skill, dancing around his sword with ease. Her knives are near invisible at the speed she’s moving at, and it looks like she’s going to win when the boy by chance corners her - Jon leans forward in his seat with baited breath, heart thumping with worry but not for Arya - there’s a look on her face that he knows too well, and there’s going to be bloodshed - and Arya darts down under his arm and back towards open space and it looks like it’s all going to be okay after all - 

There’s blood on the arena floor and the boy is screaming. 

She’d cut the tendons behind his knees, unprotected by his armor, and the boy is screaming and screaming and he doesn’t stop even after he’s dragged away, and Jon can hear him even after he’s been taken to his tent. 

When the once-Commander looks down upon the field he sees Arya panting, chest heaving, staring at the dark stain being soaked up by the loose dirt of the arena. Her knives are still in hand, wickedly curved and the left dripping with dark blood, and she uses her right to slip fingers under her hood to wipe away the sweat dripping from her brow. 

There is no remorse in her stance, and she turns to glare up at the King’s stand. “Match to Arren the Small,” the referee calls. She stomps off the field and back to whatever hideout she’d managed to find. 

Jon can’t follow her, not with Davos at his back. Instead, with that choice taken from him, he exchanges worried looks with Bran and settles in for Sansa’s return. 

“That was damn vicious,” Davos mutters, “boy’ll be lucky if he can walk again.” He’s rubbing one big hand up and down a shivering Shereen’s back, but most of his attention is on the Starks. 

Behind him, Jon can feel Robb’s knobby knees press into his back, and then the brush of his on Jon’s shoulders as he leans down. “That’s not good,” he mutters, “When our Lady Mother finds out Arya crippled the lad they will be _words_ had.” A sliver of fear shudders through his voice, but there’s more exasperation than anything, and together they watch as the next match starts. 

He’s not much concerned about Arya as he is their stance as innocents being compromised in the coming war too soon. She can handle herself, she’s shown that well enough, but she’s vicious and cruel sometimes, and sometimes the instincts she pretends she doesn’t have rear their ugly heads. Arya is an assassin before she is a daughter, a killer before a knight, a tool before a Princess. 

Jon’d almost forgotten that, in all the months without her shadow touch needed. 

Letting her fight was a bad idea. 

He says as such to his brothers, and watches the downward tilt of their mouths, the scrunch of their brows. “We may not have fully considered the consequences,” Robb ventures. 

“It wasn’t my idea,” Bran denies, and looks his full five years. His cheeks are puffed out and his eyes narrowed, red hair flopping over his eyes like some sort of puppy. “I thought you lot had figured out that the first thing she would do when she was cornered is go for the kill.” He’s sitting up straight, little hands folded neatly in his lap, but Jon can see the sweat beading at his temples and upper lip, the worried tightness of his mouth. He looks disturbingly like the Lady Catherine. 

Robb’s knees in his back and Bran pressed against his side, he tries to remind himself that nothing matters so much as the fact that they are both alive and well. That there is a so obvious disaster heading their way means nothing. They have gotten through worse; they beat the end of the world. 

Then Davos looks around, finished comforting the quick recovering Shireen. “Where’s that other one?” He asks. “That shifty boy ye had with you.” 

“Theon?” Robb asks, voice high and strained. At once the brothers look around, searching for their traitor cousin. The stands around them are empty; they are in Stannis’ private box. They’re looking frantically around, but Jon already knows the damaged Ironborn boy is gone, and likely forever. 

They’d not doubted the other boy’s loyalty, not passed Bran’s bitterness and Robb’s anger; they never should have let him past Winterfell’s walls. 

“Theon!” Bran shouts, and jumps to standing. “We have to _find him_!” He’s near to panicking, climbing up the stands to get the best vantage point. 

They can’t see him.


	14. THEON

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theon is a mite touched in the head.

The Wolf Girl is fighting, and she smells like blood and pain and the shadow things that lurk in her edges. The boy in the dirt who is quiet grayness is fighting too, and then there is red on the dirt and the Brothers smell of lighting and he wants to _go_ , so he does. 

They are talking and Theon is good at being quiet, he is, he is, so he just slips past the Wolf King and by the tree boy, quiet as a mouse, down the steps and no one stops him. Not the guards with their horned heads or the warriors wandering around with blood in their shadows, and he’s gone, gone, slipping away and out and following the ocean sounds. 

Salted air smells like the God lurking beneath the waves (they are dark with blood and rot but are not, yet, will by and might be and are mixed and twisted in his head) and he knows the salt caught in his curls of hair (his hair is dry and clean and smells faintly of sweat and flowers, not salt, but he does not know this) makes him wary. 

Gods of salt and fish have long fingers and long memories and halls of bloated corpses. He knows this. He does, yes, the touch of sea-bloated corpses. 

The Light One twists in his head, and he wanders through the people of the island of the shining lady, and he can taste love in the air, pretty things and happy things and shadows in people’s shadows, strangers touches in their hearts. 

He avoids those people. Doesn’t like them. People don’t feel like strangers anymore, ‘cept when they do, and then they’re not very _good_ people. So he walks around one of them in the crowd, a man with tangled up hair and dogs under his skin, head ducked down and hands tucked trembling and pale beneath his coat sleeves. 

A nice lady, who feels like mothers and bread and is behind a stand waves him over. She is soft and nice and he smiles back at her, wanders over. There is sweat beading on his upper lip and he licks it away, tastes salt and fear. But there are no shadows in her eyes, no dark things clinging to the folds of her coat, this Mother, and he feels good talking to her. “Hello, little boy,” she murmurs, and her fingers are clean and calloused, lined like her face. “Are you all alone?” Her voice is kind, soft flowers and a touch on his mind like the dark place where his mind got all twisted around on itself, and he wishes he could see it like he could hear it. 

“No,” he says. He’s gotten better at talking, the birdie’s been teaching him, “not alone.” He smiles and it’s awkward, stilted, a little too much teeth on one side and not enough at the other. She smiles back at him anyways. 

“Where’s you’s family, eh, little one?” Theo wants to say he isn’t little, he’s a big boy, ‘cept he’s a dog and not a boy and he’s not so big now, neither. 

Instead he says, “They gave me away,” and smiles. They did, the iron men and women, shipped him off. He barely remembers them, their faces and their lives. He can barely comprehend the idea that he is one of them, but there is salt in his scalp even after he washes his hair and his mouth always tastes like iron. Like blood. 

The mother nods solemnly, and then squats down, just a little, until she is only a little taller than him. Theon tries not to feel offended. “Well,” she says, and gives him a secret little smile, “why don’t you take these, and have a little treat.” She slips a pair of tarts into a waxed paper packet. 

_Food_ , Theon thinks, and takes them just a little greedily. The voice that is beyond voice and thought and emotion chides at him, _donotbegreedy_ , so he thanks the woman quietly. He does not like to speak. 

She is about to send him off when he says, even quieter, “You’re going to make a good mother.” 

He’s gone before she can even gather her thoughts.


End file.
